what’s working :: organizing my ideas

I’ve shared quite a few of my home-organization projects here, but today I thought I’d give you a little peek into how I am working to organize my creative ideas…

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When my kids were babies (and toddlers ;-), I had a favorite chair where we sat to nurse. Often while we relaxed there together, my creative ideas would flow freely.

And after a while this began to cause me a lot of discomfort. I started to resent my beautiful babies and all the time I spent sitting in that darn chair flirting with creativity but never being able to follow through on anything.

Then one day I looked up and noticed an empty ceramic planter hanging on the wall and I decided to start “filing” my ideas in there, trusting that someday I would be able to return to them.

I set myself up with a pen and some index cards and soon nursing became a favorite time for me to unwind and release all that was swirling in my brain.

One day last fall, after my children began attending daycare two days a week, I climbed up on the chair, dug my way through the dust, and retrieved my notes.

As I flipped through the cards my Mothers’ Retreats and An Evening of Refreshment began to take shape. Blog posts were born. And I also started to see the very faint outlines of my future books (both for children and adults), writing retreats, a farm-based cottage school and a family yoga camp.

And I started getting really excited.

From there I made myself a very basic portable file with folders that say things like – blog posts,  my books, freelance articles, retreats and workshops etc.

I have found one of the biggest challenges for me as a writer, creative thinker and passionate lover of life is that I tend to scatter my energy far and wide, bouncing around from one idea to the next so quickly that I just can’t seem to make progress on any of them.

Creating a system, albeit a very simple one, to “download” what is in my brain for possible future use, and to start to sort and categorize everything, was a huge step for me in getting more focused and being more productive (and happy!!!) in my work. And that really works for me.